>> that was "after words," book tv signature program in which authors are interviewed by journalists, public policy makers, legislators, and others familiar with the material. "after words" airs every weekend on book tv at 10:00 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9:00 p.m. on sunday, and 12:00 a.m. on monday. you can also watch "after words" on line. go check booktv.org and click on "after words" in the topics on the upper right hand side of the page. >> for the next three hours it's your chance to talk with the author and investigative journalism team of donald r. lett and james steele. the pulitzer prize in national magazine award winning dual will talk about the american dream, tax reform, and the u.s. health care system. the vanity fair riders have authored a book together including america, went wrong, critical condition, and their 2012 release, the trail of the american dream.

>> donald barlett, when did you and james steele start working together? >> guest: 1971. >> host: how did you meet? >> the newsroom of the philadelphia inquirer. it was interesting. we were both hired. >> guest: we actually arrived on the same day. >> guest: same day. we never knew each other and had almost no contact area are first-year. >> host: who teamed you up? >> guest: someone at the paper, the paper and recently changed ownership, and he was very interested in projects, investigative projects, enterprise journalism, and he thought that the two of us who were newcomers might be able to work together. somehow or another ordains that this would happen. very often that does not work in journalism. sometimes they don't like to work together, but we tried to experiment. so far so good, as they say. >> host: why did it work for so long?

>> guest: we think it worked because a similarity of work ethics. we both love to research and report. in effect, we both say that means we are of sound mind. nighter it means we like to -- nighter one likes to ride because that also means we are sound mind. similar work habits. i think a belief down deep of fairness in government and some case private interests and not always treat the average person fairly, and we sort of realize that early on in the partnership one way or another we have been writing about that ever since. >> host: donald barlett, the remember what your first project for the philadelphia enquirer was in 1971? >> guest: oh, yes. federal housing administration, fha. it was the fascinating project because it dragged on for two years. >> guest: they thought there were going to put this together for about three months, and we wrote some articles after three

months, and it generated a tremendous response. what happened was poor people were being sold defective houses in the federal government was assuring that, and it would collapse after a month or two men in the same guy who sold it would come in and fix it up again and selig and the somebody else. so this generated a huge response. encourage this at the paper, just keep working, just keep digging and see how far this goes. >> that should have been no warning sign to editors because we just kept producing more and more and more. and there was one, one of our editors from the later years to warn, don't as the many questions. it will generate another 50 inches of copy. >> host: 1979, your first book came out, empire, life, legend, and madness of howard hughes. why howard hughes? >> guest: we had done a series for the enquirer in the mid-70s examining the hughes empire ties to the federal government's to

my very limited kind of thing in that sense. we call it the silent night -- silent partner of ours used. and in the face of everyone's perception he was this or individual who hated government and all the stuff. so publisher came to us and said, how about doing a book on that. we said, great idea. we signed the contract. about a month later hughes died and the publisher said, how about we make this a full-scale biography. and years later the result of that was empire. full cradle to grave kind of story of his life, a book which we are very proud of because it has remained continuously in print since 1979. >> host: what were howard hughes connections, as you say, to the government? >> guest: it's hard not to imagine and figure out how he was not connected. his contracts ran across the board from the cia to us defense

huge. there were not small contracts. he did very well on the taxpayers' expense. the other thing that emerged from that is just, whenever you hear this right individualism, i do this on my own, add on the the government, if you look, you will find the government's summer putting money into that person's pocket summer. at some point in time these people do not do anything on their own. and hughes definitely did not. >> guest: -- >> host, welcome your most recent book, the the trail of the american dream. this is a quote from that book, and it deals with an issue that we are dealing with today. if congress had not enacted these tax cuts, the bush tax cuts, if congress had not opened a new loopholes, we would not be having discussions about the dangers of the federal deficit. tax cuts did not just that in the bank accounts of rich people

to, they plunged the nation deeper into the red. >> guest: absolutely, and that think written about taxes and deficit finance for many years. and until we looked into it for this book we did not fully realize just how egregious those revenue losses have been. this is the point we make. a lot of people think what is happening in the economy, all this is inevitable and we are just -- the rest of the world is catching up with us and that is where incomes are stagnant and all this business. we show that it is very much because of public policy. these things are just not happening and and and. taxes are a perfect example of that. i mean, none of the statistics in the book -- one of the statistics in the book that has stunned people, go back to the 50's and look at the richest americans, which is a specific number of people come of 400 richest. the irs says track these people often on for many years. back in the mid-50s they paid

51 percent of their income in federal taxes. on the verge of the implosion, economic meltdown in 2008, those 400, the richest americans, their percentage was down to 16%. i mean, that's a huge difference. a lot of ten people don't realize what has happened to the tax burden because of those tax cuts, not just in the last decade, but some preceding that as well. >> guest: and you cannot do that and not create massive deficits. you just can't. it's the one to you to consider yourselves muckrakers? is that a fair word to use? >> i suppose the rest of the world considers us that. i think, you know, we have always call ourselves investigative reporters. we tried to tell people something they don't know, try to connect some dots on stories that may be out there. we tested but the seas. i think as the most important

thing about what we have done. we don't start out with a game plan and say we're going to prove this. we try to show, here's an issue. the world, though rich getting were richer, the deficits. so we began testing hypotheses to see exactly what is real and what is in real. that is what drives us more than some game plan of politics or political theory. >> guest: never done that, ever. in other words, because subject on the basis of, we are going to really do a number on this person, number on this program. it's not a good idea. and it's really unnecessary. usually what we do comes as a result of a question. often from somebody else, often from an editor, reader. why is this happening? that's a good question. >> host: what about advocates? do you consider yourself advocates? >> guest: i don't think -- i'm

sure that a lot of the critics will call as advocates, but i don't think so. one of the more interesting things is, over the years as a general we are perceived as being extreme liberals, i guess. i don't know. aren't these liberals. that's misleading, to because of the years we have some of our work published in conservative publications, as to the chagrin of some people, but you can't -- no one person, no one in theology has a lock on what is right and what is wrong. >> guest: and what is interesting, over the years, some of things written about, the range of the letters. i mean, and the response. a book we wrote 20 years ago, much to the surprise of some liberal folks that we know, when we told them, probably half of the male was from conservatives

who like many, many aspects of the book in terms of what had happened to old-line corporations because of things out of wall street and so forth. it's very hard to generalize. and one other thing about advocacy, we feel that if we had just brought things to light, some other part of the process, and when it dies it dies. if someone else picks up on those ideas and goes with them, the wait goes, but our job as far as we're concerned, and when we bring something to light. and a lot of journalists don't feel that way. they feel crest of something they brought -- the attention of the public is and picked up and ran with. >> host: in 1994 your book america, who really pays the taxes cannot. here's our quote from that book. any attempt to tax the country out of its annual deficits would prove yourself. therefore, a new and more just tax code should be accompanied by a reduction in federal spending, amounting to at least

10% of general fund al look. >> this seems like it would be relevant to today. [laughter] >> guest: and we have always believed that both taxing and a certain amount of restraint, both are important. i think the problem we have had with some things today is that so much of the emphasis is supposedly on cutting. and the forces that just want to cut very often are not for increasing revenues, and they go hand-in-hand. in fact, some of the negotiations of the last few weeks, there has been a glimmer that more and more people seem to recognize that you really need both. you cannot do one another the other. >> host: what is the nexus between wall street and washington in your view, mr. mr. barnett? >> guest: well, whenever wall street wants to make gets.

without a doubt. and the movement between wall street and washington has gone on forever. and it's not to denigrate everyone who works in wall street's, but it does say there coming at a problem with a different perspective. it is not necessarily to the benefit of the largest number of people in this country. it works to the benefit, really, and quite often of a handful of people, their approach to government. the. >> host: bid -- >> host: you get the philadelphia enquirer. how long were you there, where did you go, and where are you now? >> guest: i left the inquirer and 97. from 70-knot -- 70 and 97. we worked on our own for one year and sells 71 when we were teamed up. we went to time magazine for ten

years. >> host: and now? >> guest: it vanity fair. >> host: give us a quick history of the awards that you to have one as authors. >> guest: well, two of the ones that are broadly on most people's radar, we have won two pulitzers, 1975 and 1989, two national magazine awards. 1999 and, i think, 2001 at time magazine. that is rather unusual. people to win in both of these categories. national magazine awards are like the equivalent. got that basically most of the major journalist accords over time we have one book awards, the total is somewhere around, i believe, around 50. and that goes back to the mid early 70's. >> host: good afternoon and welcome to book tv monthly

"in-depth" program. this month co-authors james steele and donald barlett are our guests. they are the authors of eight books. we will show those to you in just a minute, but we also want to get you involved. if you would like to participate in our conversation, we will put the phone numbers on the screen. (202)585-3880 if you live in the east and central time zones, (202)585-3881 for the mountain and pacific time zones. you can make a comment on our facebook page. facebook.com/booktv. you will see them posted right up there at the top of our page, and you can go head and if you have a question or comment you would like to make, we will try to get to as many of those as possible. you can also send us a tweet. twitter.com/booktv work @booktv is our twitter handle. finally, you can send an e-mail. we will get to those very quickly.

here are the book's beginning in 1979. empire, life, legend, and madness of howard hughes. 1985, forevermore nuclear waste and america. and then in 92 america what went wrong, america who really pays the taxes in '94, america who stole the dream and 96, the great american tax dodge, how spiraling fraud and avoidance are killing fairness, destroying the income tax, and costing you. that cannot and 2000. critical condition, how care in america became big business and bad medicine in 2004. finally, the the trail of the american dream came out in 2012. james steele, the use of the word american and america throughout your books. when did that become a trend for you guys? >> guest: i guess in a the american out what went wrong

book which is a series prior to that which greeted expanded into book form. because it had the idea, these books are about american, average americans for the most part. what they are going through, national scope, the problems were not endemic to any one particular area of the country, and the resonated with people. america is one of those words that has such deep and powerful meaning with readers and viewers because it gets to the heart of what the country is about. but it was not a conscious thing in the beginning when his name was developed in the case of america what went wrong in '91 and '92, but then after that it seemed to be kind of a way to capture those issues that we wanted to portray the people. so it has not been at every book, but it has been with many of them, of course. >> host: in your 1996 book, america, who stole the dreamy

report that you received 30,000 letters in response to this magazine style feature. how did you research the book? >> guest: well, a really big book was america who stole a dream. and we realized when we finished that, one of the huge areas -- i think we did not exploit to the extent we felt we should have. but that book was almost 100,000 word newspaper series. and one of the most rewarding aspects of that series was when it was reprinted. this was hard to imagine today, but people actually lineup around the block outside the enquirer to buy the reprints. >> guest: talking about america what went wrong speech to america what went wrong, yet.

we realized and one of the things we left out of the book, at least not treated with the same degree that it should have been was trade. and that's what happened then. who stole the dream. a much heavier emphasis on trade . >> host: i want to read to quotes from america who stole the dream beginning with in the global economy constructed by washington and wall street, all americans live next door to a low wage country. and a second quote from that book, because there is little real difference between the political parties on trade, there has been little real difference in dealing with an issue at the heart of the formulation of national trade policy revolving door. >> guest: this is absolutely, and we talk about it very much in the recent book. and it is actually one of the things that people have found most of lightning in particular about the most recent book

because most people say, well, gee, i am for free trade. it is a great idea, and we made the point that free trade is a wonderful idea, great idea, but all your trading partners need to practice it in the same way or else you don't have to respond to reciprocity. you have the u.s. being taken invented jeff. that's how we have a $10 trillion trade deficit. and what has also encouraged it is the movement in and out of congress into lobbying and so forth that has assisted very much in promoting various free-trade ideology is. i mean, they sound good. they sound like apple pie and motherhood, but until you get down and look to see how they're playing on the real world, then ucla we practice it in this country is not the way it should

be practiced, and that is why it has eliminated jobs, the way the trade deficit. policies that are detrimental to us and workers because they know we will never in any way ever did particularly tough on that issue because we are such free trade believers. and a lot of them are encouraged by the political process and by the influence peddlers to assist the process. >> host: donald barlett and deeper trail of the american dream you talk about the boeing corporation and a faustian bargain. what is a faustian bargain and how does that involve the boeing corporation? >> guest: well, boeing is, a series of agreements with china. one day it's going to come to regret because the company will be really either at chinese subsidiary or working pretty much for the benefit of china

and not a u.s. company. and without the plane exports, the sale of boeing planes, our trade deficit would be massive. envy -- what boeing has done basically is turn over its technology to the chinese, to the extent that they are now producing there very own medium-range. >> the equivalent of a 737. >> guest: the equivalent of a 737 plane. they won't be going any more. at some point in time the chinese will sick and it's very nice and we will keep you around, but we don't need to. and how this could happen really says more about the government's involvement in trade policy. we see no problem. it just -- here is the handwriting on the wall. just look and see what you think about it. >> host: what is a faustian

bargain? >> guest: in exchange for selling the chinese airplanes, boeing is transferring more of its production to china. so all of this is in the short term. the idea is they are able to sell your plans to china and would get the chinese and production in the meantime, but that we continue to ship more and more. there not even including some research facilities. and as you just mentioned, even the manual basically on how you build aircraft. a manual which is put together -- been put together over decades, some of the taxpayer supported because boeing is also, of course, a major defense contractor. so for the short term boeing has made this bargain, but the long term, it cannot work out to our advantage, and the chinese have thought about this, they created their own commercial aircraft industry, financed by the government, started by the government, all the things that supposedly free trade is

supposed to be about. there is no secret about this. but what does that mean down the road? this one great export that we have is probably going to be in peril before too long. >> host: you right, 70 percent of the seven kayseven dream liner is foreign content, according to the society of professional engineering employees and aerospace. the union that represents boeing engineers. in contrast, boeing 727 was originally built with about 2% foreign content. >> guest: that shows how things have changed. [laughter] >> guest: it also explains why employment in the future is going to be very dismal because those jobs are gone, and they are not coming back. >> host: critical condition, health care in america became big business and bad medicine came out in 2004. you write, whatever their purpose, prescription drugs in the u.s. cost from 30%-60% more

than the a exact same medications sold anywhere else in the industrialized world. that is because governments elsewhere do not consider drugs to be just another consumer item like cars and clothing but rather products vital to the health of their people. >> guest: the one thing as a pro the change in that sentence now is, i think 60 percent. there is no doubt it is much, much, much higher. there is a cancer drug that has just come on the market, $28,000 for a single treatment. that's not the real world, and if people understand why health care in this country is in such bad shape, all they have to do is look at drug prices. and the prescriptions. americans consume more prescription drugs, you know, a per-capita basis than any other population in the world. and absolutely not.

>> guest: if we had as ceo from a drug company out here your she would say, oh, well, what about the research that we put into this. we need to get our investment back so we can find more drugs. it. >> guest: but what most people don't understand, been very good about keeping quiet, most drugs do not work. now, if you tell someone that, they are really shocked, but the fact of the matter is, 50 percent of the people taking drugs derived zero benefit from as prescription drugs. it's because of the internal make a of their bodies. they just don't work. but nobody ever tells people that. and, you know, to the fda or another agency comes along trying said take the drug off the market, the industry will bring forth these crying people saying, i'm going to die.

baloney. so just, they don't work. and found it amusing. the medical industry is most quick to respond to vitamins. vitamins, you excrete them in no time, but they really don't work well, the same is true for prescription drugs. they don't work. 50 percent of the cases. no, not 50 percent across the board. cancer drugs don't work. only effective and 25 percent of the cases. 75 percent they're worthless. and then it goes up depending on the disease. and these are from the drug industry's own internal studies, not hours or something tank corps some person who is out to skewer the pharmaceutical. the drug industry's own data.

>> the reason that the industry says that they need those profits for research is basically the only argument that they have to justify the high prices. the fact of the matter is, they sell these medications around the world. and not selling is a loss. they're still making money elsewhere. but other governments have said, and most, they have said that these kinds of prices are not acceptable. there is a public interest involved here. so they still make money elsewhere. they just make more of it here than anywhere else because there is absolutely no regulation for prices. >> if you're going to see this continue exponentially. as the industry becomes more global industry, which it is now . their research is moving offshore. the drug sales will be -- marketing the drugs more heavily in other countries, especially

third world countries. those countries don't have the kind of money to spend that americans do. >> host: what about the relatively recent trend toward advertising of prescription drugs? >> guest: well, you can chart the effect of the advertising. the most heavily advertised drugs are the most profitable drugs, the pharmaceutical and the street. study after study has shown that. americans are really responsive to advertising. and it's why some countries don't permit it to be to prohibit it. exactly. >> guest: the private advertising speak to a new contract to grow from drug sales almost from the time the widespread advertising was permitted. >> host: the year 2000. a great american tax dodge came out, how spiraling fraud and avoidance are killing fairness, killing the income tax and costing you. income tax evasion is a crime. avoidances perfectly legal.

the line between the two is often blurred, a murkiness fostered by -- >> guest: has to do it the way this country makes the tax laws and what they permit. in one of the things that the text that got into in great detail that we had never explored in any real significance was the whole explosion of the offshore accounts, all the jurisdictions, not just in the caribbean, but the pacific, obviously the ones in new york as well, lichtenstein and so forth. began to show how that had become such a powerful factor in people shifting money. and coupled with that was the growth of the internet. suddenly the internet was this wave of democratizing tax avoidance and also tax evasion is in some cases. all of these are new tools that were not in existence just a few years before that. congress's constantly -- in fact, we talked about in the

book, berated for the way it was going about collecting taxes. we made the point the book. no one likes to pay taxes. it's one of those things it goes on the problem was not the irs, the problem was the way congress makes tax law, the way the amended or don't amended, the way they have an opportunity to make it more fair, but don't read this has gone on for years, and that is what creates this market is out there.

there's been almost no effort by the u.s. to significantly go after that, bring that back. that, too, too help our deficit. >> guest: this obsession with multitrillion dollar deficits. if you applied the tax laws they way >> those deficits might not be there. >> host: a lot of talk about reform. national sales tax, flat tacoma simplification, deduction. >> you can go over the last 50 years and see the same -- i am whacked out over taxes. the american people are being played for suckers. and it just -- there's only so much you can take. the taxes -- there's nothing going on out there that can't be solved very simply by treating people equally.

that one of the things that runs through all of this work of ours. it's not -- the word fair we try not to use because my perception of fair is confident than yours or somebody else's. but treating people equally should be easily understandable and should be applied chaos the board and taxes and it's not. and it never will be because the special interests own the tax-writing committees in congress. there's no provision in the tax law that a special interest can't get changed if it wants it. >> other things you talk about was the issue of simplification, tax reform. these words are part over the debate on taxes for decades, but everytime they come up at it like their new. a favorite one, we're going to close loopholes. you can find in the

congressional record over the last 70 years quotes about closing loopholesful legislation that was passed but was to close loopholes. the same thing with simplification. look in the 1930s in the congress recall record how we need to simplify the tax code. so all of these things are hoytic and go on all the time, and what we have made in numerous times of the years, anytime where tax reform is mentioned, you have to be careful because it very often becomes a door for those special interests that tom just mentioned, to get what they want, or for certain broad-based things to happen like rate reduction. that turns out to help a handful of people in this country. everytime we try to reduce rates and broad 'the base -- you'll always here that -- that invariably works out for the been fit of the wealthiest americans and the detriment of the average person. >> guest: probably my favorite

newspaper series, which -- i think we regret to this day not converting to a book -- was the provisions in the '86 tax reform act, that benefited a special person or company or corporation, because you -- what we did is we went back and went through the tax law, and probe out the annual language which said, for example, persons -- what was the wordage -- a person born in a certain day or a person living in a certain city with these identifying characteristics, will be excused from this new tax law. >> guest: none of the -- >> guest: i mean, i get speechless over this. this is so corrupt that it just boggles the mine.

>> host: this just happened again in the so-called fiscal cliff. >> guest: this is an old tradition. >> guest: an old tradition. >> guest: we had bun book we talked about, louie meier, he got a big one back in the '50s. these things are not new. and that's the point that is very important to recognize. you can't believe what is written down when it comes to tax law. what don just talked about. the tax reform act of 1986, one provision, it repeals this really heinous, awful tax shelter down in the virgin islands. we got rid of thus, cleaned this up, this guess for everybody. then right after it says section c, b, above, shall not apply to a corporation incorporated in delware on or busy march 1, 1981. and which owned one or more office buildings. >> host: which corporation was that for? >> guest: a company based in california that was making use of that tax shelter.

>> guest: virgin. >> guest: and his tax lawyer went to congress and got -- local congressman or somebody else to put this in, exempting him from what everybody else would have to go through. the act was filled with these, and we deciphered these. people called it egyptologists. we had u.s. attorneys call us and say, i never knew who this guy was. they knew it existed. so, anyway, the reason we bring this up is that this is an old pattern in this country. everytime tax reform comes up, always the sale -- same arguments, simplify the backed to, to just two rates or three rates. simplification has nothing to do with rates. it has to do with the rest of the code. whether there's one rate or three rates or ten ratessor,er still going to look at the table if you're a tax preparer, to find out what you owe. so, there's so much foolishness

about the tax code that fools the average person, and we've made a lot of our career trying to cut through that. >> guest: this is a case where the people in congress -- there's another way to put this. they ran a con on the american people year in and year out when it comes to taxes. there's a pure con. period. >> host: from the great american tax dodge, want to read the end of the story and then have you give the back story. and this is diwant to find out who wrote this section that i'm about to read: for the -- the once impenetrable curtain that protected the family from prying eyes for generations was unexpectedly pierced on the night of september 3-1997, when jocelyn returned to the couple's on ulent manhattan home after a visit to the 66,000-acre

ranch in kenya, walk into the six-store townhouse on east 64th street next door to gallery, she found her husband in bed with a 19-year-old long-legged blonde. alec hastily wrapped himself in a towel, grabbed a nine millimeter handgun and pointed it at his wife and her two bodyguards, quote, i wasn't expecting anyone, he screamed, with a touch of understatement. you're trespassing, you don't belong here. the bodyguards summonled the police who arrested alec and charged if women three counts of second degree men that -- menacing. where does that fit into the great american tax dodge? >> guest: the wildensteins are a -- they're very prominent in the art world. >> guest: both in new york and europe. >> guest: very, very prominent.

>> guest: the way this fit in, is a recall -- you're testing our memories. a little foggy here but my basic memory is that here -- they had a tax case where various regulations had come to light, and one of the reasons these things came to light grew out of this domestic disturbance, if i'm not mistaken and that opened the door to this glimpse into their finances and tax situations. >> guest: which people would not have seen. >> guest: it's ams.~ing how many records you'll fine remating to domestic issues that otherwise you would never see. we wrote about one industrialists 20 years ago, who let go his workers, and we contrasted him with a woman who worked for him for 35 years, and we said that the care and feeding of the -- he was paying more for the care and feeding of

the family dog than he was taking care of her pension. people would say where in the world would you get such a fact? i said one of his wives. she had to show how much money she needed to support the homestead, and there was the veterinary bills and other things. but in those are the kinds of things that resonate with people because then they see who these people are, how they live their lives, how they use the system, and it's the kind of things they average person, of course, has no access to. >> guest: it's generally not known -- evidence will disappear -- is tax -- if taxes were public. and it's generally not known that if you go back to the early '30s, the amount of your total income, the amount of tax you paid, was a public record.

and so if people saw today what some people are paying in taxes, there would be revolution no question about it. none. so, it's a real argument for total openness rather than secrecy, because secrecy only breeds corruption. no matter what it is, it breeds corruption. and you can hear the corporate lawyers, the lawyers for rich people saying, that's not fair. why not? we're all paying the cost of what is unfair about it. so why not make the playing field center -- playing field level? not open up the whole tax return, just those two items. and they were public for several years in the '30s, much to the chagrin of wealthy people at the

time would did their best to keep that secret. and it was the lindbergh kidnapping that started this. as if anybody needed that information to determine who is rich. what is interesting, what was interesting, when you go back and look at that, in the newspapers at the time ran it, the new york papers ran the list of people -- of the really wealthy people and what they paid in taxes. it's a real education to go become and look at that. and i can't imagine what that education would look like today. if you had the same two pieces of information. >> host: one more question before we go to calls. you said you have to -- do you have to be a so-called egyptologist to read bills. >> guest: the taxes are the most demanding. it's not so much you have to have any special training.

you just have to be patient. you have to read it and then try to follow it through. go back through it to see exactly who it applies to. some of these were actually quite obscure. some in terms of special interest provisions and a company incorporated in some state on such and such date, required us to then go to that state and very often go through whatever the filings were for them. one thing we ran across had to do with one company which issued 97 million in bonds or something like that. so, we had some of the database people who inquired, will you search this lexus, and see if anybody issued a bond in that amount. and sure enough, they came up with the name of the company, and then other bits of detail in that provision matched that, and that's how we were able to decipher it so it's mow methodical than difficult. you have to stick with the stuff to piece it together. >> guest: we found -- this is

why we use records. we do interviews, we talk to people. but we always start with records. because it tells you what is going on. it schools you a little bit in something that may be very complicated. and also tells you, when you interview somebody, whether or not that person knows what they're talking about. sometimes people aren't necessarily lying to you. sometimes they just don't know what they're talking about. and if you have a little background information on that, we feel that gives us a leg up to know whether or not this person is reliable or not. and that's a big issue. we don't just put anybody from -- we want to make sure, are they legitimate, do they know what they're saying? >> host: and this month, on in depth, award winning best-selling authors donald barlett and james steele. eight books under their books, a book about howard hughes, 1985, nuclear waste in america.

america, what went wrong, 1992, america, who really pays the taxes, '94. in '96, america, who stole the dream? the great american tax dodge came out in 2000. critical condition in '04, and this past year, the betrayal of the american dream. sam in florida you have been very patient. sam, you're on with donald barlett and james steele. >> caller: hello. thank you for taking my call. i wanted to ask the authors what they have to say about the cost to consumers with regard to copyrights and patents in their expiration of trade and drugs. >> guest: this is a very important issue you're raising. especially on the patent end.

we wrote in this book about apple in particular. basically bailing out of this country completely, eliminating almost all of its manufacturing base, eliminating just all the jobs that had been created here and moving everything to china. but what's interesting -- and apple is not unique in this. the companies -- the global corporations that do that continue to maintain pat tents in this country and,over going to sue, as apple did recently, with samsung, accusing it of violating patents, they expect to use the u.s. legal system, even though they really don't have employment here or amount to anything other than token employment.

and so one of the things we were thinking about is why should the u.s. -- and being the u.s. taxpayer, basically -- a legal system for the benefit of corporate america if it's not doing any serious employment in this country. >> host: want to start with facebook comments we received for you. this is from tina. tina says: i believe money and politics is our biggest threat to equitable representation in our government. what does your research reveal as far as this issue is concerned? >> guest: well, she is absolutely right. and i think there's widespread agreement on that. in fact it's one of these things that even both parties -- parts of both parties agree to they'd like to get this out of -- some people would, anyway. others make benefit from it.

so, we did not explore in great detail in this last book what some of the solutions could be. we have talked to people -- talked about everything from constitutional amendments to limit money and politics and so forth. but before anything can be done, she is absolutely right. something has to be done there because the amount increases. it seems like the election cycle now is continuous, where once it was short. other countries have found ways to restrict that to a shorter time frame. which at least would save some money in that sense. >> host: doesn't that open up more loopholes? >> guest: you mean restricting -- jive you restricted the times? ways around that? >> guest: well, we're very inventive in this country no, doubt about it, and perhaps the only difference would be, we would save a little money in that sense. but a lot of people are looking at this, and we couldn't agree

with her more. that is the root of the problem. you can't change the tax code, free trade, the deregulation issues, you can't change the whole issue of debt financing and all that until we figure out a way to get beyond the influence of money on politics. >> guest: this is not easy and may not be possible now that the supreme court has deemed money an exercise of free speech, and that really raises the bar on this, and just means anything goes from here on out. >> host: one feet: how are the people to vet and understand the true amount of what the government spends? where there is accessible, understandable data. >> guest: there is really a lot of dat tamp it's not a shortage of data. the problem is always a matter of analyzing it, seeing what is

there. i mean, one of the stories out there know we both found disturbing, that's one whole story out there that social security is in some sort of immediate trouble and that somehow the bookkeeping is not proper. this is totally bogus in our mind. social security will perhaps have to be changed and the retirement age raised? quite possibly. but the funds it not in any danger in the immediate future. medicare, different animal. both of those get lumped together in this as though they're both the same problem, and they're not. all you have to do is look at even the u.s. budget in brief, and you can see a lot of these issues. that's what is interesting to us today. your don't have to go to the library, as much as we love libraries. you can do this at your computer, free, 24/7, wherever you happen to be. >> host: what's one site you recommend?

>> guest: this is important. i would not settle on a single site. at it pulling together information from multiple sources. >> guest: there's several. gao is certainly one. the comptroller of the currency, whoever the president happens to be, those numbers are there. the u.s. budget is online, i think through numerous sites, from the white house, or american conspiracy theorists you think the government is manipulating the budget. those reports are very volumous, the joint committee on taxation -- >> but you have to learn how to read -- >> guest: it takes time. there's no short cuts it's not exciting work. people always ask us, ever been threatened? never been threatened sitting at a library table looking at this data, but that's the heart of

the work. it takes a long time but it's open the average citizen today in a way that was much more difficult a few years ago. >> guest: you're putting your finger on a critical problem that goes unmentioned. and that's the news media. and especially now when the news media is really under such pressure and never going to be the same again. it's hard to imagine how this is going to play out, but going back in time, two or three years, to the news media that existed over the last 200 years, you can lay the blame for much of what has gone on by its failure to ask the right questions. >> host: well, alan, makes a comment on facebook page for you: are there any young journalist you feel are replicating the type of in depth reporting you practice?

>> guest: there are lot of good journalists out there, and in fact don and i are in an odd situation. there's a national award named after us, which is administered by a foundation at arizona state university. and -- sunny thought they were supposed to wait until we were dead. >> guest: but every year, some pretty amazing material goes into the award process. that's just one. don and i individually judge contests from time to time. there's a lot of outstanding work going on in this country. certainly at the regional level and some things also at the national level. is it ever enough and have there been giant breakdowns? that's true. we think one of the great breakdowns right now in the media are in what we call the beat reporter, the ones following a story day in and day out, week in and week out.

because a lot of those ranks have been decimated by cutbacks. so a lot of the broad stuff, still quite a bit of that going on, and you go back decades in this country, and there's actually less of it in some ways than there is now. so, as long as people have a way -- an avenue to get that stuff published or viewed, whatever it happens to be, we have a certain amount of confidence that that's the course -- everybody is worried beside. >> guest: and this is especially true because most people get their information from television, which does not do well with complicated subjects. actually, doesn't do it well and doesn't do it at all. so kind of irrelevant anymore. but this is a real problem. the force of most news for most people.

>> host: diane in arkansas, thank you for holding, you're on. >> caller: where do i begin? you guys are so refreshing. the first time in years that i've agreed with many of the guests on c-span. i'm so surprised. i guess when i first -- i've been on -- waiting 25 minutes here -- and at first i wanted to speak to you about nafta and the world trade and all, and this is -- that's one of the -- when we out here started feeling helpless because -- if c-span remembers, in the early '90s they were having calls about nafta. they were that getting one call for nafta or the other trade agreements. no one of us wanted it.

and this is republican and democrat. and it was still shoved down our throats. so we feel helpless. and nothing changes hardly, because -- one example, i was reading a letter that i had written my husband back in 1968 when he was in service overseas, and i was saying in that letter, they're talking about closing the post office. that was in 1968. closing the post office on saturdays. it's still the same. i go back to my tapes from c-span and political tapes i taped in the '90s, the same problems are still there, and so we feel -- >> host: diane, we're going to get an answer. diane is one of our unofficial archivists out there in the world who -- >> guest: very important to have. >> host: she just records a lot, a lot, and almost nearly all. >> guest: well, die -- diane,

you're right on the nafta business. what we have done in the latest book is to go back over a long period of time, showing not just the nafta agreement but trade agreements before that. what everybody said they would do for employment, how they would make the market fairer for workers at home. so on down the line. nafta still is one of the most dramatic examples how people were sold a bill of goods. it was promoted on the basis this would be a great thing to send exports to mexico and at the time we actually had a trade surplus with mexico. when nafta was approved. and people made all kinds of claims about how the kinds of jobs that would be created and so forth. the trade surplus evaporated almost overnight. we now run a very, very healthy trade deficit with mexico. never been in surplus since that time. every independent study we have seen that has analyzed jobs, shows there has been a net loss in jobs from the nafta

agreement. again, totally like almost every other trade agreement. we don't say in the book that we shouldn't do these things. what we say is we need to enforce reciprocity with our trading partners, whether they be mexico, japan, china, or this ongoing gutting of good-paying jobs is going to continue. no not just in manufacturing but the whole service sector as well, and that's the crux of part of the new book, trying to get people to wake up and realize we need to have a different policy. we need to have a different approach or we're going to continue to lose these jobs. >> host: in "the betrayal of the american dream" barlett and steele right global free trade is the opportunity to shift jobs abroad. like so many other chapters, the shipment of work offshore began

imperceptibly as a way for companies to trim costs and was seemingly so up consequential in the beginning that it appeared to pose no threat to u.s. workers. america essentially invented outsourcing. if those outside the corporate world realize how rapidly it would devastate employment across the middle classes as imports quickly overwhelm experts and workers after in industry after industry were sacrificed on the alter of unrestricted free trade. in reading through your books, gentlemen, it seems you don't necessarily go for the interviews with the members of congress or the heads of corporation. is that a fair assessment? was that purposeful? >> guest: we do some of those interviews but very offer we take the official statements that people make. congressional hearings are filled with these statements. the congressional record is filled with these statements in the case of corporations, very often their own annual reports or speeches people make.

so we'll use what the written record has said in the past just an an example to make sure it's authentic and verifying it. the heart of what we do is piecing together the story from multiple sources and that's why what has happened is sometimes supplemented also by an interview, but we have all of it to tell the story, buttressed by whatever the date data shows the tissue be. >> guest: in some ways it's a way of making sure that people don't come back and say, well, i wasn't quoted accurately. because we're dealing with things that have been in print and no one has challenged, and there is a result, perfectly safe. >> guest: it's amazing how much of this -- you find in the congressional record for all of the craziness from congress, the record and various hearings that committees hold are an astonishing record on all of

these issues. trade, taxes, regulation, or the lack thereof. a lot of that is there. >> guest: the sources of the great quotes. when we talk about and a half tacoma i'll never forget the quote from somebody in congress -- i don't remember who -- it won't be long before mexicans will be driving cadillacs out of this country as fast as general motors can make them because of the new prosperity. just hasn't happened yet. >> host: mark in hawaii. >> caller: how are you doing, gentlemen? >> guest: very good. >> caller: i want to say thank you for your book, america, what went wrong. when i purchased that book and when i went online and got position papers from the white house i finally realized just how controlled the media actually is and how much the prop gap da machine it has become. they're not interested in

informing. they're interesting in managing the population, and i think if a person doesn't take it upon themselves to do the research, they're never going to understand what is being done to them. i find it interesting that when ronald reagan became president, we had a trillion dollars in debt and by the time george bush second walked out off office we had almost $14 trillion of debt. and i believe somewhere in the range of 80% of that was generated by republican administrations, and military defense increases. and yet it's very strange how the republicans seem like they're the fiscally sound party of conservative values when in fact they're the ones that made the mess. and then i don't know if they really think their pulling one over, but what i find interesting is how well and complicit the media is in allowing them to get away with that. they never bring them to task. they never make it clear to the public that it's the republicans who did all of this damage to

this country. i'm not saying clinton didn't either because he did with his telecommunications act, his nafta treaties. he lied, gore lied. they had to have known. mickie cantor, they had to have known what this would generate. i believe they're creating a two-class society on purpose and the media is serving at gatekeepers to manage this society into this arena in which the masses have no leverage and no resources in which to fight back. don't have the, the information, the organization -- >> host: all right, mark. got your point. mr. steele? >> guest: well, mark, sounds like you're reading part of our book as you mention these issues. basically right in term office the deficit, and don and i have been frustrated by the coverage we have seen of this issue, because in talking about the deficit, those who want to restrain it or cut it, the

entire emphasis for the most part has been on entitlements. entitlement spending is out of control. and what is overlooked in this is that social security and medicare, of course, are -- taxes are collected to support those programs. so, it's not as the all of that is coming out of the general fund. in the case of social security, a surplus in social security continues to mask just exactly how bad some parts of the deficit are. you're absolutely right from really the late '70s on, the growth of the deficit has been phenomenal. during the clinton years some of that went down, but as we make the point of the book, both parties, unfortunately, on most of these issues, have had a very significant role, especially when it comes to free trade and deregulation. taxes, it's a little different, in our mind. the democrats have been a little more savvy in terms of what

needs to be done in terms of taxes and spending reductions. but on other issues, both parties unfortunately -- their fingerprints are all over these things that created the two-class societyover talking about. >> guest: the other thing here is, back to this news media thing and people getting the bulk of their news from television -- and now that you have the cable channels, it is really -- for someone who wants to think about what is happening, it's a great source. like your archivist, she's wonderfulful she would have a field day with this. if you look at cnbc, the business news channel, they have been -- on one hand over here, they talk about the -- they promote investments in the drug companies because they're going to give you your best return.

those are the ones you want to own right now. wait a minute. they're he ones creating the deficit in part because of what they're charging and because a lot of what they sell doesn't work. so, in a way tv -- commercial tv wants this both ways. you can't have it. you can't say, the pharmaceutical industry is going to be a great source of investment, put all your money in there? and then on the other hand say the government is not doing anything to trim these deficits when they're encouraging them. can't haste both ways. >> host: we talked to diane in arkansas. she does that on her union, but c-span as an official archives as well, run out of purdue university. everything that c-span has covered since the 1980s is available online at c-span.org. you can go on to our web page

and you'll see video archives there. everything that we have covered is really searchable, really friendly there is an official c-span archivist as well. joseph in baltimore ex-you're on with james steele and donald bartlett. >> caller: thank you. i'm glad to be speaking to these two gentlemen. i was wondering whether they would agree that the democratic party, in the early '90s, with the new democrats, a conscious decision that in order for them to be a relevant national party, they had to neutralize the defense establishment, the foreign policy establishment, as well as wall street or else they would never have a national significance and they would become irrelevant. i'd like to hear their take on the shift that the democratic party felt it had to make.

>> guest: we -- to tell you the truth we do not delve too much into the issue of motives and motivation, about why things happen. unless that motive makes itself very, very clear and obvious, and you can sort of get to the heartment we just try to stick with what happened, and there's no doubt that the democratic party certainly in the '9s and today is a far cry from some of the positions it took in the past. i couldn't believe at the time on the whole debate on obamacare you had people standing up in the audience, 75-year-old map saying i want to get government out of my healthcare. of course government is already in their healthcare through medicare. the reason we have medicare is because of the democratic party in the 1960s under lyndon johnson that put that through. we have social security because of the democratic party in the 1930s under fdr. so there's a rich tradition of doing these kinds of things by

the democrats. there's no doubt the party is not as populist based as it once was. whether the country as a whole has shifted that much or whether they were reading the wrong clips in the media, frankly i'm not sure we can tell you what it was but there definitely has been a shift in that sense. >> host: this e-mail from ron, all of your subjects seem to be basically revelations of corruption of american stereotypical ideal. what you believe is more the norm, corruption 0 idealism? aren't you driven to be per reppally pessimistic about the future of america by your work? >> guest: i don't see how -- anybody could be anything other than pessimistic when you look at healthcare, which is -- it's portrayed routinely by people in congress as the world class

healthcare system. you have to be deaf, blind, and dumb, to believe that. but yet at it done all the time. so, yeah, pessimistic, you better believe it. until people wake up and realize that their pockets are being picked. both by people in congress and wall street. >> guest: it's astonishing, this debate on taxes in the last few weeks. to get the top rate up to where it is, and only apply to people that, say, 400,000 and above. i mean, most people apparently have no realization as to what rates used to be like in this country. i mean, the late '7s, 1980, when reagan took office, the top rate on earned income salaries, wages, was 50%. on dividends, interest, it could be as high as 70%. this is raised under this last bill from 15 to 20. on dividends and interest.

we are so far below what we would call a progressive tax system, what used to exist in this country, and yet even to get this little change has been almost like moving mountains. so i mean, it's a reflection of where we are, and part of it -- i'm not so sure it's education or what it is, but it's a matter that we need to make sure what our priorities are about. the corruption isn't necessarily illegal. it may be unethical. bad behavior, where people just sign on to certain issues and they go that route. but until people who we elect start representing the broader interests of the population, we're going to be in this trouble. and that's what i -- i think that's what we're worried about. i think america is a land of idealism. i mean, all of these beliefs that this donary has had for years, it's made the country what it is.

people made fortunes. and we make the point in the book you can come here and get rich but the main american dream for people is just to take care of their families, maybe have a secure retirement, have a decent paying job. hope their kids do as well or maybe even better than they do. that's what the dream is about. and that's what is sacrificed here. not for everybody, but increasingly numbers of people and that's what we're worried about. doesn't have to be that way but until we shift these policies, this will continue. >> what do you si too taxpayers who may be frustrated with the federal government, frustrated with government, think their money is being wasted and that is my money, give it back. >> guest: well, you know, that's a legitimate complaint, too, on the waste. on the other hand, tax fraud is through the roof. and that includes on the part of many people saying exactly what you're just saying.

it is -- i give you -- this is where i wipe my hands with taxes anymore. i give you an example of just how bad it is. and how unfairly the irs is. this is congress. it's not irs, irs does what congress tells it to do and somehow these people in congress have become masters of changing this, and switching the blame to irs. back in the '60s and 70s, i.r.s. had a fairly decent handle on the extent of fraud in this country. they developed a system that really worked and that was irs's mistake. it worked too well. and congress took the position, we got to get rid of this. there was -- it was called the taxpayer compliance measurement program. a very sophisticated program to

identify the areas in the code that were being the sum -- subject of most fraud. and it worked. it worked very well. except those people started complaining to their congressmen, congressmen started complaining to irs. and as a long-time friend we have here in washington, put it, nobody gets elected to congress by cracking down on their taxes. this is where it's almost an insolvable problem. everyone should want a tax system that is honest, but people don't. >> host: in "america, what went wrong" you write: throughout american history when excesses within the economy result in private gain for the few and

hardships for the many, congress and the white house responded. often reluctantly, usually after interm anyonable delay but in the end they responded until the 1980s and the 1990s. >> guest: this is one of the most interesting aspects of the kind of work we do, in addition to write about how things are today, we go back and look to see how things were. and the whole process by which the income tax came into being is perfect example of that. it took years and years and years, many, many false starts, and the whole basis of the income tax was to create a tax that somehow taxed some of the great fortunes in the country, which at the time were going basically untaxed. it was the idea that these people should figure out a we to pay for part of the government. average people paying sales taxes and excise taxes and tariffs were supporting the government and folks at the top were getting off. that was the basis of the income

tax. it took forever to get that through. other laws were the same thing. fewer food and drug act, which had to do with abuses of medicine and food. that took years and years and years, scores of revelations, of children dying from cough medicine and things of that sort. all of that was publicized for a long time before that act finally got through, i think in 1906. but -- you see similar kind of things. the sec was founded in the 1930s. the securities and exchange commission, way to try to bring some oversight to the financial industry at the time. so, these kinds of things have happened over time. but increasingly, the thrust, from then 1980s on -- late 70s, you see the beginning of this under president jimmy carter deregulating industries. the whole trust has been deregulation of industries, what companies do what they're going to do is go to be best for the economy. there's a reason for some

regulation. as we found out in the whole mortgage meltdown in recent years. this didn't just happen. this is a whole switching of the way the mortgage industry worked. don and i have been around a while and we remember when we bought our first house. when you got your first house and had a mortgage you almost had to morgue your first born child. that bank and s & l want today make sure you could do that. this is totally flipped in the last generation and the reason is because wall street and banks figured out how to package the mortgages, a great way to make fees and make money for everybody, and whether or not the person could support that or not was irrelevant. and it also made secondary mortgages for people who were fooled and tricked and so forth. so that's a huge title shift that was possible in part because of the -- of an environment that says, anything goes. so there's a reason for

regulations. not just to stifle business. the police we see on their corneres are an example of regulation. that same idea goes up and beyond that. the financial things as well. >> host: ken in atlanta, georgia. you're on the air. >> caller: good afternoon, gentlemen, this is just a treat. just a real pleasure to hear you and i've got some good news for you. right now, on youtube, there's a seven and a half minute film narrated by former president of georgia tech, incidentally georgia tech won the ball game the other day -- but georgia tech's president, the name of this film is, all american citizen team. and it is an effort that the georgia general assembly has been involved in since the

1970s, and we found out that there is a problem and it takes us back to a country western song, looking for love in all the wrong places. >> guest: one of our favorites. >> caller: we don't have problem with the government and we don't have a problem with elected officials. the problem turns out to be the folks that sent them there. and a high school principal said to us over at the general assembly one day, he said, the problem is civic illiteracy of the american people. well, he said that in the early '80s and only took us 30 years to find out what civic illiteracy is, and it begins with we're using the wrong form of government. >> host: mr. steele, any comment for the caller? >> guest: i assume what you're talking about is the

parliamentary form of government, though i may be speaking out of turn what you're discussing. but we've also heard these stories, and frankly, we don't know what the answer is, but if there is clearly a form of illiteracy -- the other thing to be said an awful lot of people we feel who want to do the right thing and would like to see the right thing done, and the response to our book this year has further convinced us that folks are out there, who know what should be done. are concerned about their country and who would like to make sure the right kinds of people are representing them. the problem that's happened is that the way we do elect a lot of our representatives anymore, we have created a legislative and congressional gridlock in this country. this has gone on now for a while. it's going to continue to go on clearly. all the effort that went into

just trying to get this fiscal cliff thing dealt with, which is this mild tepid response to a big problem, as you imagine, is perfectly illustrative of where we are in this country on those issues. so, if you want to send us anything about what kind of government you think we should have, we would very much like to see that and we'd be happy to continue the discussion with you. >> host: is the web site barlettsteele.com? >> guest: that's it. >> guest: the e-mails there are and look forward to hearing from anybody who wants to follow up on any of this stuff. >> host: do you work in the same office, work from home? >> guest: we work from our homes at this point. over the years we have worked in offices both in philadelphia inquirer and time magazine, but now it's more -- we've each got our office and the electronic stuff anymore, it's not so important to sit there across from each other, and as long as

we work together, it's not the issue it might have been when we first got together that first month. we sort of know each other at this point. we know what -- how we work and what is important. but the electronic era has made this really possible. we sent things to each other. we talk a lot. when we're working on a story. we've always edited each other significantly before we ever send anything to an editor. just to make sure -- i won't do something and he'll say, you forgot this or this. so it's very strongly based on a collaborative thing that we each contribute to each other's stuff. >> host: does one of you write a first draft? >> guest: no. we both write. that's usually determined by who has done the most research on a particular aspect of the book. >> host: are you personal

friends? i mean on top of being work friends? >> guest: i'm a curmudgeon. i don't like anybody. he has learn to tolerate me. >> guest: he is really very soft hearted underneath that gruff exterior. >> host: joe in el paso, texas, you're on with james steele and donald bartlett. this is book tv on c-span2. >> caller: good afternoon. it's an honor to talk to you all. gentlemen, do you believe that everything you've write is the truth? i mean, it's -- do you mean what you write is, that's it, there's no other truth? and also, related to that, the free trade agreement, i live in el paso, texas, and work in mexico, and worked in the united

states, both countries, and i'm telling you, it's -- you don't know what the border is until you lived on the border. you don't know what -- how patriotic people are in the border towns. now, we go to the free trade agreement, mexico is our neighbor. the united states is mexico's neighbor. i don't want my neighbor to be poor and raunchy and have a mobile home and trash all around and kids with sickness and -- i don't want that. the free trade agreement, you're only looking at the balance of trade went to mexico. it used to be -- we were sucking dollars out of mexico. now we are putting dollars in.

but we are doing it through commerce, not -- get my point? >> host: joe, what kind of work do you do in el paso? >> caller: i'm an economist and a miner, a mine are consultant, and i've worked in both places of the united states and i'm a mexican-american. >> host: is it fair to say you're a supporter in general of nafta? >> caller: i'm a supporter of -- no i'm not a supporter of nafta in general. i'm a supporter of free trade. >> guest: free trade. >> caller: yes. >> host: do you find that in your view, has free trade or the current setup benefited el paso and mexico? >> caller: it has. it has. it benefits mexico. it benefits the united states to begin with when it first got

implemented. i mean, dollars were coming -- people in mexico were buying american machinery, american this, american that, without paying tariffs that went down to zero, thanks to the free trade agreement, and they could buy legally and pay just the price that it's worth, and not more. and that allowed mexicans to modernize, and accept politically the united states was supporting a corrupt -- and those people were stealing the money, but now michigans are little bit better, and as you can see, the economy is -- in mexico is improving, and it's -- i think it's growing at 5%. >> host: joe, thank you so much for calling in. we appreciate your point of

view. mr. steele? >> guest: two thing, joe. you raise theque of do we believe what we have written is true. well, we do believe that. however, within a topic you can certainly write more on any subject, and so this is a view as we see it of some of these issues. so what we have written is our view of the way we thing these things have work out, especially on the whole free trade thing. only the issue you're talking about, we don't dispute for one minute that there has probably been some economic stimulus to mexico from this agreement. so other part office nafta have been very detrimental apparently to mexico citizens there in terms of agriculture and so forth. so there's always tradeoffs. we understand that. that's totally understandable. but the issue of what you're talking about, on development, and how good it's been for mexico, the problem we've had in the u.s. that we talk about in

our book, is that none of the free trade agreements were sold on that basis, that this is going to be very important toward uplifting everyone in mexico. these agreements were universally sold on the basis that they will be beneficial to both sides of the border, and in the case of nafta, you have to look beyond just el paso and the border in mexico. you have to look at the country as a whole, because many of the jobs impacted are is not there. and we should tell you that don and i actually spent quite a bit of time over the years on the border. we have both been in el paso, brownsville, other places along the river, also in arizona, california. so we're not unfamiliar with the border and what goes on both sides of it for a long period of time. but that not the way these free trade agreements have been sold in the united states and that's the point of the book. people have been told they will

be good for everybody. and we make the point that, no, the promises trotted out that we would sell more, have turned out to be false. we have actually -- we're selling more but we're buying more, so the deficit is greater. the job losses have been considerable in a number of industries. that nobody said would be impacted by this. so it's more that issue than anything else that we're trying to raise. there's not been a kind of straight talk on the issue of trade. so anytime you're going to enact one of those agreements, there's going to be some major dislocations, but that's not the way they're promoted. they're promote on the basis it will be a snag here or there but overall very good for everybody. and we say, that doesn't explain why we have accumulated $10 trillion in trade deficit in this country and no other country has that. >> host: anything to add to that? >> guest: i think what jim just mentioned there on at the trade

deficit, we're all worked up over this deficit spending. trade deficits are far worse. these are jobs that have gone. and a $10 trillion trade deficit and nobody cares. >> host: mike in bend, oregon go ahead with your question for james steel;... >> caller: sold them by someone like goldman sachs. and as you mentioned, the tax

code is hopelessly unfixable because of congress and their need for the campaign funds that those sellouts generate. and i wonder if matt taibi might be the guy to carry the torch for some of the investigative journalism that you do. thanks for your comments. >> host: mr. barlett, do you want to start? >> guest: sure, on the border. >> host: no, i apologize. anything you want to respond to that matt had to say? trickle, trickle down, the tax cuts, your next book, matt taibi. >> matt would be the perfect person to pick this up, couldn't agree more. >> guest: yeah. >> guest: we love him. and trickle down most assuredly has been discredited, i would think. alto it keeps coming -- although it keeps coming up. that's what's so disheartening. all of these things keep coming up like they're new, and they're

not. and i guess maybe you always have new listeners out there or new viewers on tv, but there's nothing new. >> guest: what he, what you talked about on the unfunded pension plan is quite interesting. and, in fact, we've got the section in the book on pensions. and one of the reasons don and i like to do what we do is that you always learn new things, or you may relearn old things that you may have forgotten. and pensions are a perfect example of really the heart of a lot of the problems of the american middle class has. the '50s, '60s and '70s more and more people received pensions and were able to look ahead to secure retirements. but in the case of private industry, since the '8 0s on,

during the trickle down era, those plans have been eliminated. when we did our research we -- and this isn't any secret number anywhere -- but we came up with a number about how many pension plans have been eliminated since the mid '80s. this was after decades of more plans being created. 1985 on 85,000 plans have been killed, workers shifted into 401(k)s. there's nothing wrong with a 401(k). but a 401(k) was never, ever envisioned in the beginning as a substitute for pension. it was always a supplement for your retirement. it was never to take the place of it. so it's another example on where a younger generation coming along will have less security than many members of the older generation before it. and, frankly, we're very worried about that. and you always hear, people tell you you have to save everything

you can do and so forth. couldn't agree more on that. but what's the problem is that it's almost impossible under a 401(k) system. >> guest: i think we're, i don't know, not to be believed on anything. but by and large, people are very responsive. and one of the things i really like about the body of work is you can go back, and it doesn't matter what the subject is, over the years and find, um, kind of forecasts we've made that have been right on the money. and i love that. and this pension thing is one of them. who stole the dream was in '92. we had a warning in there that if something isn't done, we are

creating the basis for a war among working people. those people who, you know, basically work within the private sector and have a defined benefit pension which are systematically being eliminated and those people who work within the public sector -- police, fire, teachers -- who will always have the defined benefit pension. and at some point there's going to be a class warfare there. and it's already started. you're already hearing this. why should, you know, why should someone who worked all their lives, you know, either with their hands or whatever, an accountant, why should they be coming up with money to bail out the public employee pensions which are just off the charts?

they are no -- of all the things that aren't sustainable, public employee pensions now are not sustainable. but yet they're going to take the position we got these, we bargained for them, we got them, and so we're entitled to them. where well, where does the entitlement come from? it comes from the taxpayer. ain't gonna work. you've got people in california in particular drawing down pensions between $100 and $200,000. that's not the real world. and it's going to get very nasty, because at some point people who are actually doing the labor are going to say, hey, what am i doing here? this isn't, this isn't to be believed. >> host: well, alan puts on our facebook page, what are your thoughts about the occupy wall street movement and what it has accomplished? >> guest: well, it's interesting about this. i mean, obviously, they're hitting the issues that are all through not just our current book, but books we've written on

for a long period of time. some of the criticism is that it's diffused and it hasn't focused on one thing or another. frankly, i'm not sure, you know, that's valid. i'll tell you an interesting thing that goes to the heart of it. they have helped solidify in part the idea of the 1%. but interestingly enough, when this came up, you know, don and i actually wrote about the top 1% back in '96. i mean, that theme has been around a long time. so we're, in that sense, totally with them in terms of the 1% and what that is. i think they helped solidify m some thoughts about what's out there. they showed people these great gaps in the society. and what they've done was not information that wasn't already out there. i mean, i think that's the thing that's so curious about what's going on with the body politic. i mean, the inequality that we

have legendary. i mean, you have the top 1% of the population has more wealth than the bottom 90%, or a figure roughly like that. i mean, that's like the late 19th century. and some people say this is inevitable. it's just a global economy, this is what we're in to, there's nothing we can do about it. people need more education. college is always important, education is always important, but until we change the other policies, that alone won't be enough. i mean, that's the point we make. the problem in our mind, the biggest single driver of the inequality has been the change in the tax code. there are other issues, but you cannot minimize what that's done. i was at a lunch back in missouri, where i'm from, a few weeks ago. and i sat next to a fellow, a

very, very wealthy man, by the way, who's also given money to all kinds of causes, as decent a fellow as you'd ever want to know. and he was railing about how his taxes had been cut systematically for years and years and what an impact that was having on people he knew and the middle income families of people he knew. and he said this is crazy. you know, why did we do this? why did we roll all of these things back? and he's giving away his money as fast as he can, because in part he has more to give away as a result of cuts. and there are only so many houses you can buy when you have that much money, on the so many airplanes you can buy, only so much you can do with that kind of money. and that's what the inequality is about. and we need to turn that back. and that's what the book is about. and that's what we're worried about at root. we need to get back to more

balance in society. it's not a matter of penalizing the rich or inciting class warfare, it's just a matter of restoring some balance that's just not there now. >> guest: the other really disturbing thing is, and it also explains why we're not generating the kind of tax revenue we should be, the kind of jobs that are being created simply don't pay the money anymore. for the most part, over 40 years we've used irs statistics because they're the one bedrock, and they're very refutable. more interestingly now are the social security statistics which show that something like in the recent years, i think it was 2010, two-thirds of the jobs paid less than 40,000 a year.

now, those are payroll tax. so those numbers are irrefutable too. what you don't know is, okay, husband and wife working, so it could be 60,000 or 80,000. but two-thirds of less than 40,000? this country, this, you know, when the real uproar started over the deficit when we came out of the downturn, everybody was focused on creating jobs. you don't hear that anymore. and part of the problem is the jobs being created just do not pay. and now you have this, you know, commitment we've got to begin cutting government, well, that's cutting jobs. and those are going to be jobs that aren't going to be replaced with jobs that pay any meaningful wages. and so the cup's in a real bind -- the country's in a real bind that way. >> host: donald barlett and

james steele have won about 50 different awards including two pulitzers. they're the authors of eight books. they're on booktv's "in depth" program this month. as we continue our programming in just a minute.

>> host: and we are back live with our two guests, james steele and donald barlett. mr. barlett, in your greatest influences -- can which we always ask your authors -- you listed a gentleman named sydney weinstein from the counterintelligence corps. >> guest: yeah. sydney was his given name. his middle name was tom, and everybody knew him as tom. of he was just an extraordinary,

you know, people are either, have a strong affinity for the military, or they hate the military. the military people i met were just wonderful people, and they were really well educated. they took advantage of all the education opportunities the military does offer. and i went to work for him when i was in for three years. and so he was fresh out of west point, for the most part, as a captain in army intelligence. and he was just a delight to work for. we were running background informations, and a -- investigations, and a lot of time there were investigations with really serious problems. and he wanted you to work as many days -- as many hours a week as you could and usually

seven days a week. but you never realized you were working. that's the kind -- first of all, that's the kind of person you really want to work for, because you don't even think about how much time you're spending at the job. you really don't. >> host: when did you serve in the cic? >> guest: it was from 1968 to '71. >> host: did it help you in your current work? >> guest: sure. the old intelligence school's a great -- you know, if you go back over the history, people in journalism went back and forth with intelligence, you know, all the way back '20s, '30s, '40s. so they're very common. i took the attitude i was just writing for a smaller audience, that's all. that was the only difference. but he was just an incredible, had an incredible way of getting people to do things. and as it turned out, he ultimately became a three-star

general in charge of all intelligence and totally remade army intelligence. and commanded the kind of loyalty you just don't see anymore. i'm sure you do in some of the military, but he was phenomenal. >> host: mr. steele, one of your favorite books that you list is the revolt of the elites and the betrayal of democracy by christopher lesh. >> guest: yes. an absolutely pastbreaking -- pathbreaking book in my mind. don and i both agree on that, we both read this book. >> host: newer book? older book? >> guest: older book, about roughly around 1990, late '80s, 1990, thereabouts. might even be a little bit before that. but, basically, there was a famous book back in the '20s, '30s called "the revolt of the masses," and the idea that the masses at a certain point wouldn't take some things. they would rise up and demand this, that and the other thing.

laschu from what he saw was happening to america from really the '70s, '80s on, he saw the reverse. he saw folks in power, folks that had the ability to effect public policy and corporate policy were seizing control of things and, in a way, sort of withdrawing from the larger body politic to put in places this things they believed in, taxes, a corporate structure that catered to their interest but not the population as a whole. and he saw this as kind of a betrayal of democracy, that you had the people at the top -- smart, intelligence, who had once been just another significant part of the whole american system -- pulling back from that. and getting what they wanted for their own. it was, in a way, kind of a complete triumph of self-interest. that's the way he viewed it. book made a tremendous impression on me, because it was one of those book withs that ended -- books that ended up

connecting a lot of dotteds that you'd sort of seen and understood, and you could sort of figure out in that sense what was really going on. and it was very, i think, influential with both don and me as we began analyzing various public policies in some of these areas. so lasch was one of those folks way ahead of his final -- ahead of his time, and who also died, sadly, way ahead of his time. but who was, i think, instrumental in understanding exactly where the united states was heading. and so he had a tremendous impact on us. >> guest: he also, he had a way of phrasing things, and the one that i use over and over especially with young journalists is we don't know what we need to know unless we ask the right questions. and if you think about that and really consider it seriously, listen to any of the network news programs, listen to any of

the cable tv. invariably they ask the wrong question. and bad things happen as a result of that. you know, you think back to where are the weapons of mass destruction as opposed to are there any weapons of mass destruction. we went to two wars over this because they did not ask the right question. and it goes on all the time. now you can just listen to it with the deficit stuff, asking the wrong question leads you in a direction that will not give you the answer that would solve the problem. and it goes on all the time in government. >> host: donald barlett, james steele, they're our guests this month on "in depth." we're going to put the phone numbers up, 202 is the area code. 585-5880 in the central time zones, west and pacific,

585-3881 is the number for you to dial. if you can't get through on the phone, because they are all ringing, you can contact us via social media. make a comment on our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. and you can e-mail us at booktv@c-span.org, or you can send a tweet @booktv is our twitter handle. by the way, follow us on facebook and on twitter to get updates throughout the week from booktv. now, here are the books, very quickly, eight books in order. 1979, "empire: the life, legend and madness of howard hughes." "forever more nuclear waste in america came out in 1985. "america. what went wrong," came out in 1992. america, who really pays the taxes in '94. "america: who stole the dream" in 1996. "the great american tax dodge" came out in 2000.

then in 2004 "critical condition: how health care in america became big business and bad medicine." and finally, in 2012, "the betrayal of the american dream." this, it seemed that you were on the a pattern of every two, four years a book, and now the time between "critical condition" and "the betrayal" was eight years. why is that? >> guest: we're reflective. >> guest: getting older. [laughter] >> guest: as one gets older, one gets a touch slower. but just a touch. also, though, we -- this was a different kind of book, the last book. and one of the reasons for the, this gap is that it's a new book, but it is also in part a synthesis of a lot of things we have sort of thowbt -- thowbt b and seen and obvious served over a long period of time. so it had an interesting gestation period. we think this book was probably gestating a long time before we

actually even thought specifically about trying to do a book again. so that's one of the reasons. and i think it's one of the reasons the book meant so much to us, because when you cover these things this long, when you've followed people as many years as we have, you have a very unusual and unique opportunity to write about a situation that no matter how smart you are when you're 25 or 30 years old or even 35, you haven't, you haven't seen all of these things. so we wanted to pour as much of that into this book as just the stories that we did come up with. >> host: crafty worker tweets in: when will barlett and steele's new book be out in paperback? >> guest: probably early summer or late spring. roughly. that's a guess. we don't know the exact date on it, but that's just an estimate. >> host: randy in pennsylvania, thanks for holding. please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: good afternoon, gentlemen. since the sherman antitrust act

was never repealed, why isn't it enforced? i think as long as we have this act with no teeth, what good is it? i think this'll divide our country like the caste system. thank you. >> guest: well, there are a lot of acts -- you're absolutely right on sherman -- in a whole range of industries that hasn't been enforced. and, unfortunately, this has been true of a range of issues. i mean, all -- so many of the free trade agreements actually have provisions in them that, if enforced, would go a long way toward making trade more equitable and fair and beneficial to many of our citizens here in the united states. so, you know, this is an old problem, but you're absolutely right. we have, don and i have been around long enough that we remember that there was a time when the antitrust division and the justice department was a really going concern. and they used to look at these things over a period of time and go after conglomerates and

aggregations of companies that they thought were being counterproductive, so forth. very little of that's happening now days. what's interesting to us, we talk about this a little bit in the last book, so much of the deregulation that we've seen over of the last few years in both most recently the finance industry, prior to that the trucking industry and in the airline industry -- particularly the airline industry -- the deregulation was to promote competition so in a way you wouldn't need an antitrust oversight. the airline industry appears to be heading toward just a very handful of carriers. so it's the exact opposite of what deregulation was supposedly going to produce. i'm not sure there's an antitrust issue involved there, but it's certainly a concentration issue and will mean, ultimately, fewer options for air travelers. >> host: the poll mac tweets in:

my 11-year-old son who's watching asks, why do you like politics? >> guest: i wouldn't say i like politics. [laughter] i'm fascinated by the people in politics. also, you know, all joking aside government workers have an incredible influence over what citizens can do and the way they live their lives. tax policy determines so much more than just taxes when you look at all the writeoffs and various expenditure cansment -- expenditures. it really dictates in a way your daily life. if you stop and think about it. why am i doing this? you think, oh, yeah, there's a reason, there's a tax reason for this. and so it just, it has an impact

on almost everything we do, politicians. >> guest: i think what, you know, it's a very good question that his 11-year-old son has asked. it's not so much we like politics, but we're very interested in how the country's run which is partly politics, it's partly administrative. it's that whole issue how we do things or don't do things. because that gets to the heart of so much the structure is. we've been in this mode in this country, a lot of people, government is bad, government is evil, it interferes with things. and it totally ignores the purpose of government and why government can be a positive -- and it very often is a very strong positive force for a number of things. and if we do anything, we'd like to convince people, especially young people, that government is not evil. there may be things it does from time to time that are not things that you do, but there is a reason for it. there is a function for it. this is what civilized societies have and do.

and it's very important that that be supported and maintained. so it's not so much an interest as it's something that's essential and making a public policy is to us one of the most interesting aspects of the work we do. >> host: earlier caller suggested a topic for you, underfunded pensions. have you picked out a project for your next -- a topic for your next project? >> guest: well, there are no underfunded pensions anymore. yeah, there are still a few left, but you have to be careful. they may be talking about public employee pensions in which, lots of luck. because that's going to mean giant tax increases, and that's not going to go over at all once that rock starts rolling down the hill. people are going to say, huh-uh. >> guest: we have no book on the immediate horizon here. we're going through after those phases where you do a book -- >> host: the book tour? >> guest: not only the book

tour, but you just -- a book is quite an expenditure of energy, and we've always taken time between books. and we have a, we've got some projects at "vanity fair" that have kind of almost been on hold as bev -- as we've finished the book and gone through the interest that this book has arisen. so all we know for sure is that we will never rub out of -- run out of material. >> guest: oh, no. the potential list -- >> guest: growing each year. things get longer and longer. >> host: have you ever thought about separating, doing solo projects? >> guest: well, i think, you know, because i'm older i would like to go back and look at investigative reporting in the '50s and '60s when i started, which is a little different. but beyond that, no. >> guest: we've been so busy with projects over the years, there really hasn't been the time to do anything else. >> host: dave in louisiana, you are on with james steele and donald barlett.

>> caller: thank you very much, and good afternoon. my question concerns the green economy. i'm an old-timer fdr democrat, and i disagree with some of the new democrats, especially the classes of '74 and '76, hart and schrader and kerry and the clintons and some of these other free traders. and the other day i was watching television, and i saw former president clinton on tv as he was talking about green jobs and how the new economy is going to be driven, the new manufacturing economy will be driven by these green jobs. and what i've discovered through my readings and in my research in particular dr. henry navarro had a good book, "death by china," is that there are companies in the united states that began here with regards to windmills and wind energy and solar panels, and now these companies have moved abroad and moved over to china. so my question is, do you guys see any way that this new green

economy is ever going to replace the old industrial economy of the united states? thank you. >> guest: it will never replace the old industrial economy. that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have such an economy and that you shouldn't do what you can to encourage these particular enterprises. that's fine. but we shouldn't kid ourselves that in any way that's going to in any way take the place of those old jobs. we have a section in the new book on solar which is, in some ways dose to the heart of -- goes to the heart of the problems we seem to perennially have in these countr -- in this country. solar, photovoltaic panels, the whole technology was invent inside this country. and if i'm not mistaken, bell laboratories in new jersey. solar photovoltaic has always held great promise, and the u.s. always always the leader in that area. it was here. and there were a lot of efforts at the time that said we need to

support this industry any way we can. well, several years ago, and there were a number of these industries or i shouldn't say industries, but a number of these companies across the united states not only huge job creators, but important jobs, certainly in a field where we need that technology. well, china several years ago decided that this was an industry that it wanted to own for itself. and can so both the national government and china -- in china and various provincial governments began pumping money into the solar industry over there funding plants, providing the land, low-interest loans, the whole market basket of things the chinese do when they single out an industry where they want to have an impact on the world stage. and the net effect of this was, basically, to drive out of business in this country a number of these solar facilities. and we got so obsessed in this country a couple years ago on

this solyndra thing and issues there, but the fact of the matter is overlooked was the fact that the whole chinese problem had driven most of the solar makers out of business. and this is the point we make in the book. until we wake up, i mean, that isn't free trade. i mean, where you have governmental units, national government units launching companies signaling that they want to take over this field globally. i mean, how is any private company in this country going to compete on that kind of basis? the answer is they can't. so at the bare minimum we need to realize ha's going on when -- what's going on when that starts to happen and take steps to protect our industries from those kinds of unfair practices. the obama administration just in the last year has finally levied some stiff penalties in the whole solar area. but the fact is the horse is out of the barn on this issue several years ago. and it's hard to see whether or

not that industry will ever recover from the damage done by those practices. >> host: henry in illinois e-mails in: i feel so disillusioned hearing what you have to say, and yet as a consumer i feel like america has experienced such great progress and prosperity since the 50es when i was born -- '50s when i was born. do you see america in decline, or do we continue to improve in spite of ourselves? are you optimist inabout america? >> guest: i'm decidedly pessimistic. one quick one, we haven't even touched, we didn't touch on any of the books. but if you do any reading, you can see this truck coming down the road, and that is robots. for so long robots did one thing, punched a hole or fastened a screw or something. now they do multiple tasks. and once that takes hold, this is going to result in the elimination of just untold jobs. and this you can't complain

about because it's improved productivity. unlike shipping stuff to china which is a giveaway to corporate america. it's not, it has nothing to do with productivity. the robots really do translate into improved productivity, and i don't think anybody is prepared for what's going to come. >> guest: i think what he, the question he's asking about are we optimistic or not, the point we make in the book many people will continue to do okay in this country. what we're worried about is the number who aren't is growing. and the issue is he talks about the '50s. we're sort of both from the '50s as well, in our youth anyway. and the part of the american dream, the part of the american experience was that things would get better with each generation. and for some people this will be true. but what we're worried about is increasingly there's more and more people that that will not

be true for. and we're not dealing with that. we're not addressing it. so america will always be here. america will always have a lot of strength. america will be able to do a lot of those things. but what kind of a society do we have if there's a significant block of it's population that is not doing well and does not have the prospect of doing well? >> host: john in las vegas, good afternoon to you. >> caller: good afternoon. thank you all very much. first of all, i want to say that i had given up watching today's america's bread and circuses which is a dallas playoff football game just to listen to you three and ask you a question. and my first question i will direct to donald, the curmudgeon, who said that there were some people who wanted to help. well, one of the persons who wanted to help was john f. kennedy in 1962. he signed an executive order,

11110, which called for the united states treasury to print silver certificates. he was going up against the federal reserve. the day he was shot, lyndon johnson stopped those printing presses. so i have a three-part question about the federal reserve. one is, is it true that our income taxes go to pay the government's interest to the federal reserve which is a private bank? secondly, why do you not in the two books of yours that i read and or thoroughly enjoyed did i not see more about the federal reserve? why is it that a private banking consortium determines the economic policy for the united states? congress and ron paul spent a career trying to explain the federal reserve to us and correct the federal reserve, and he and chris hedges who was on "in depth" both have said if somehow the federal reserve, a private banking consortium, isn't reined in or nationalized

and corporate america isn't somehow reined in, there will be massive civil disobedience in this country. >> host: all right, john, we got your point. thank you. mr. barlett, response for that caller. >> guest: well, there's a lot there. and you could, you could do a whole book on the federal reserve. actually, bill greider a few years ago did a really fairly decent job on the federal reserve. one thing that i've learned over the years is don't talk about something you haven't spent any time studying. and so i just don't know. is that a fruitful area to look at? absolutely. and especially when you look now, because now it's being driven home to me that you can have massive debt without high interest rates, which is something i didn't think would ever occur. i'm talking about the federal

government. because if you went back, you know, back into the greenspan era, the government interest rate, the government was paying 16, 17%. and you kept, you keep looking at the size of this growth, and you say, wow, this is impressive, 2, 3%? i don't know. i don't know what the -- i don't know how that's explained. it's beyond me. >> host: mary lou carr e-mails in: i'm receiving a mixed message from the authors. we're not paying enough taxes, but on the other hand the governments aren't spending wisely. ie public pensions. isn't in the source of tax resistance, not greed, but conviction that governments don't spend the money well? >> guest: well, a mixed bag. the thing on taxes, we make the point that unless you collect enough taxes, you're going to have more of a deficit, and a certain amount of what you then

do check is just paying your interest on the deficits. it's not really going to proper programs and such. so that -- i don't think it's a mixed message from that standpoint. i think we, we see taxes as a way to finance government. but at the same time, in every government there are examples of where the money hasn't been properly spent. but because there are those examples, it doesn't mean you shut down government. you don't starve the beast so that you don't have any programs. that's the extreme reaction to that particular thing. so it might seem that we're at cross-purposes, but not really. you need the money to run government, and then you need to make sure that government is responsive and doing the right job. it doesn't always do that. i mean, don and i have written over the years innumerable stories about government failures. but that doesn't mean that we belief that there should be no -- that we believe that there should be no government. >> guest: i just want to go back before i forget it and reemphasize a point that jim

made which is really very important. and that is -- and especially because i'm such a gloom and doom person. there are going to be x number of people out there who are going to do very well in our economy. but the point that he made which i want to underscore is the number of people who are going to do well is steadily shrinking. and that's the concern. that the old balance be restored, and there's no evidence that's happening. >> host: here's an e-mail from a woman in philadelphia. she, obviously, didn't have to watch football today since the eagles didn't have their best year. hello from a longtime philadelphia "philadelphia inquirer" reader. would you consider writing a book about the inequities and other problems in our country's judicial system at all levels? thank you all for your work. >> guest: wow, that's a very good idea. >> guest: that's a great subject. >> guest: i think anybody who knows the least thing about that issue knows that.

and, actually, there have been some very interesting documentaries hately on one was called, i believe, the 1% court that talks about how many judicial decisions are, essentially, favoring a handful of people. so that's a very fruitful area. and it's interesting she would raise this question, too, because a totally different thing; second big project don and i did for the "philadelphia inquirer" back in '72 was an examination of the criminal justice system in which we used a computer. and a friend of ours knew how to program tease things, and we amass -- these things, and we amazed thousands of records about the administration of violent crime in the city for one year. and it's a little different than her question, but it gets to the heart of how you're monitoring the system. and to this day, it remains one of the most interesting things we've ever done. and at the time it was quite revolutionary probably because we had a good friend who knew how to program computers, also a

journalist. and we were able to feed into this, these computers all of this massive information about muraleds, robberies, things of that sort, who were the judges who were weak for those criminals, who were tough on them, who were the district attorneys who were tough and the ones who weren't, who were the defense attorneys who seemed to show up in case after case after case. it was quite a different kind of animal that was made possible by the sudden emergence of pretty sophisticated computer programming. >> host: in some of your old work, is that available online do you know? >> guest: there's samples of it on our web site. that go all the way back, i think the first story we did is on our web site. not the whole series. but others are -- if anybody is interested in something, just write us, and we'll see if we can help them out. >> host: and barlettandsteele is the web site.

fred in louisiana, please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: oh, enjoyed your comments today very much, and i wanted to go back to what you touched on just a little while ago in the program regarding social security and medicare. my question, my background, i'm a chief financial officer at a rural health clinic. my question is this: um, the conversations now in congress about raising the age of medicare to save five something billion dollars, this sort of doesn't make sense to me, i guess. and i've always wondered, you hear these much larger numbers that there's so much fraud in medicare, and if there was a more efficient effort to go after the fraud, we could save lots more than five billion if there was an active, professional effort to do that. and secondly, your thoughts regarding health care as far as the profit motive --

[inaudible] would like to see medicare become the national health system. i don't know if you guys agree with that or not, if medicare could be worked -- >> guest: absolutely. our book, our "critical condition" book was, essentially, on exactly your last point. >> guest: right. >> guest: we talked about how i the whole experiment in the private market was failing. and until we got away from that and realized that health care is not like selling televisions and cars and things of that sort, it's a totally different dimension. we're going to have these problems with health care, so we couldn't agree with you more. and medicare would be the simplest way to do it, because the administrative costs of medicare are remarkably lower than all the private insurers. and why not? you've sort of got one platform, one tablet there on which to decide what you're going to pay in some caseses and so forth. so couldn't agree with you more on that. the fraud issue --

>> guest: i just think a call like that kind of makes me feel good, because it shows there are people out there who really care and really have the solutions. are they going to get listened to? >> guest: and know what's going on. >> guest: and know what's going on. i mean, he's absolutely right on all levels. and the business of linking social security and medicare into the same debt issue should be a criminal offense. and anytime -- i urge people anytime you hear a member of congress linking medicare and social security to the same situation as far as the deficit is concerned, turn it off. shut down. they're lying to you, period. medicare is a problem. it is a serious problem. and the point is the one that jim made. this goes, also, back to that last quote: we don't know what we need to know unless we ask the right question. and the right question on health care is, is the market system really best for health care? and the answer to that is a

resounding absolutely not. if you're talking about listerine for a mouthwash, absolutely. you know, advertise away. if you're talking about the best medication, it's terrible. absolutely terrible. and the best medical procedure? this is where i get speechless because the stupidity of trying to use the market system for health care is just recover whenning. you -- overwhelming. you want the best system for everyone. you want the best procedures for everyone. you want people to all have, again, this goes back to equality, period. if what you want is one health care system for the affluent and another for everyone else, then fine. use the market system. but that's what you're going to end up with. you will never get a good health care system. >> host: critical care came out in 2004. what's your take on the 2009 affordable care act debate? >> guest: well, the first thing

about it, though, which is a positive, they want to try to bring in the uninsured, people that don't have coverage. that's good. and we wrote about that in our book about what a crime -- not just the uninsured -- >> host: in critical condition, apologize. >> guest: we made the point in the book, it's not just those without insurance, those who are underinsured is almost as big an issue as those with insurance because the deductibles are so high in some cases. so that is a good step. to our mind, the biggest flaw in the bill is that it still leaves the providing of that insurance in the hands of the private insurance companies rather than making something like medicare your overall provider and then letting people buy supplemental coverage that as they do now wih medicare through private insurers. one of these days we may get to that. because the way it is now, it will mean a certain amount of excess cost, no doubt about it.

but from the standpoint of opening the door and getting people care who didn't get it, it's good. doctors who i know who really read the act sailor a lot of good -- say there are a lot of good things in it. they're trying to shift the emphasis to care and away from some of the procedure-driven health care system we have. we don't know that that's true or will ever work out. so we probably won't know the full reading on that for some time to come. >> host: sylvia e-mails in: will you ask the authors what they think it will take to light a fire under the growing numbers of u.s. disenfranchised? >> guest: well, we have actually asked ourselves that question. >> guest: yeah, that's one i ask all the time. what -- how long are you people going to put up with this? [laughter] and when where you going to respond? -- when are you going to respond? because it's got to come from the people. it's not going to come from the political parties. it's not going to come from anyone sitting in washington.

it's got to come from ordinary citizens out there who decide, that's it. >> host: morgan in houston. i am reading robert caro's "the power broker" about robert moses. he was an amazing bill writer while working for governor smith in albany. do you have any comments on mr. moses, how he used his skills to get taxpayer money? >> guest: mr. moses was the absolute best at that. don and i are both fans of that particular book, and moses was a genius at figuring out ways to put government to work on things. he, of course, had a lot of criticism. a lot of people feel he destroyed some neighborhoods in new york where that shouldn't have happened. if he's reading "the power broker," i would also recommend that he read this last caro biography of lyndon johnson. he's up to volume four. and this, actually, sheds an awful lot of light on current events. because you see what makes

politics -- you see what it takes for a president to push through legislation. because in some ways this dovetails back to the questions just asked when will people respond and so forth. and you need a very, very skilled chief executive who's capable of doing those things. don and i asked ousts in this question: -- ourselves this question: if lyndon johnson hadn't been there in ear 64, would this country have ever had medicare? it's entirely possible it might not have. but yet now it's there, it's widely supported by the populace as a whole even though there are critics of it. but you need an especially clever and resourceful politician who knew all the levers to pull, and that's who johnson was, and that's what you see so brilliantly laid out if caro's last book. >> host: and mr. steele says that he is currently reading "the passage of power" by robert caro, national book award finalist this year.

from east hampton, connecticut, beth, you're on booktv on c-span2 with james steele and donald barlett. >> guest: hi. i'm very glad to hear you guys talking, and i'll put you guys on my list of books to read. i've also read a book by naomi klein called "shock doctrine" which talks about particularly in south africa that point in south africa where they did everything except for handle or take over the economics of the country, and it's caused them problems there. um, i've also wanted to talk william black. he's a professor at university of missouri, economics i believe and/or law, and when he speaks, it's very clear and very understandable, his economical discussions. um, a lot of the bills i'm concerned about being passed through congress contain a lot of giveaways to corporations like this last fiscal cliff bill

gave over a billion dollars to goldman sachs to build a headquarters, to nascar, to some foreign companies to be able to hide their earnings overseas, and what i see is a lot of the people helping to write the bills are actually lobbyists. if you looked during the writing of the affordable care act, the guy sitting behind baucus used to be from, was a wellpoint lobbyist, a hospital lobbyist. and a lot of the people in the different departments like fda is full of monsanto, treasury's full of goldman sachs. and we get these kind of bills that have within them all kinds of little tax giveaways to corporations that people don't even know about. and the last thing i want to say quickly is you talk about getting people active. um, i am an activist. i think we need to get away from the democrats and republicans who, in my opinion, are serving

the same master, the big corporations. and there's a working families party that is developing and also, um, i'm a big supporter of single-payer health care and medicare, strengthen medicare for all. >> host: all right, beth. we got a lot on the table there, and i just want to add to her conversation in your book "america: what went wrong," you write: successful lobbies are measured by the legislation they stop, not by the laws they get passed. and along that same line, lenny e-mails in regards to your discussion about the need for more revenue, necessary for the operation of government: please give your opinion about the massive amounts of money which are misspent on the pet project programs our representatives need in order to pass legislation. so -- >> guest: well, he's absolutely right. i mean, this shouldn't be. it's gone on for a long time. or if you're going to do this,

the congress should in some way put in place the kind of program where there's some system to it rather than somebody showing up at the 11th hour with a paragraph that they want to graft onto an appropriations bill. and congress could easily, the committees responsible for that could very easily put in place rules that prohibit that if they wanted to. but, of course, the guys who are responsible for that use that as their own instruments of power. so a lot of that happened -- some of those projects are not totally bad projects. some of them are public works projects. you know, that's a little difference than the nascar. but there ought to be a system where you are able to see which one of those was valid and which one wasn't rather than just shoving it in at the last minute. this, unfortunately, as i think we all know, is not a new problem. i mean, it's gone on for years, and don and i have written about this off and on or for 25 years,

the way these things get slipped in at the last minute. and 99% of the congress has no idea they're even in the bill, because even their staff usually is not reading a 700-page tax bill or appropriations bill. >> guest: this is an area in which, um, there's everything to gain by slipping this stuff in and nothing to lose. i think the one thing missing from government today are penalties imposed automatically. you put a provision in that's going to benefit goldman sachs, once that's pointed out you lose your job, period. if you're -- this would require really major league legislative overhaul. but you're out of congress. put a provision in that benefits one corporation, and you're history. you know, what's wrong with that? >> host: beth from east hampton

had mentioned that goldman sachs provision. had either of you seen that in this bill? >> guest: i haven't seen that -- >> guest: i haven't heard that. >> guest: but that doesn't mean it's not there, so -- >> host: in your book, "america: who really pays the taxes," 1994, you begin with define income to be taxed in the precise terms of 16th amendment. eliminate all itemized deductions.

>> host: where did this restructure proposal come from? >> guest: that's a pretty good proposal. [laughter] >> host: now we know writ came from. >> guest: that was ours. it came from nobody. we've been very consistent on penalties in economic matters. putting somebody in prison, i mean, michael mill kin went to prison, he's richer than he ever was. it's ridiculous. take all of their money. you committed economic crime, the government seizes every last asset you have and writes you a check for median family income, and you start life anew. if anybody helps you try to

shield that, you know, shield money, same thing happens to them. in other words, there have got to be serious penalties that will deter or at least have more of a chance of deterring this kind of activity than exists today. the criminal thing is ridiculous. >> guest: and the idea behind taxing income from whatever source is really very, very simple, because the code is loaded with all of these things. we know from the presidential campaign why mitt romney pays so, such a low rate in federal income taxes, because of the gimmick he had as a private equity manager. that's one of those loop loopholes in the code that could be easily closed, shut down. but anyway, that would be a way that everybody's treated alike. i mean, that's what's so dramatic even just about the last decade and what was so amazing about the bush tax cuts from 2003, i guess it was. dividend income, interest income taxed at 15%.

for almost the entire history of the income tax, dividend income has been taxed at whatever your final tax rate was on your bill whether it was 30%, 35 or years ago when it was 50. as recently as the late '70s, that was 70% on dividend income. if you were really, really wealthy. so this is then reduced to 15%, first time in history. another example of how a tax break has accrued to the very wealthy and increased inequality. because dividends, taxable dividends go overwhelmingly to a tiny percentage of americans, all of whom are at the top spectrum of the society. so that's what makes these last negotiations over the cliff amazing. in terms of how little was really done. so the tax on dividends now goes from 15% to 20%? by historic standards this is still astonishingly low.

>> guest: it's a giveaway. >> guest: it's still astonishingly low. so what we were saying,ing do everything there. just make it across the board. and so whatever your income is, this is what you pay. put in the brackets. so if somebody's making 30 million, they're going to be paying more at that last segment of their income. it's not going to affect their way of life. >> host: neil, republican, tweets in to you: have the authors or would they consider ranking members of congress based on their involvement in the tax chi cannery they describe? >> guest: wow, that is a fascinating idea. >> guest: that's an interesting -- >> guest: i like this. >> guest: we'll have to think about that one. [laughter] >> guest: we'll have to gin up our spread sheets and things of that sort to do a proper ranking. >> guest: that'd be a great one for the web site. >> guest: that's a very interesting idea. >> host: um, by the way, there's an interesting conversation going on on our facebook page, facebook.com/booktv. like us, join in the

conversation if you want. it's continuing. we're not going to be able to get to all those comments, but we'll try to get to some more before the program ends in about 25 minutes. mary in oakland, california, thanks for holding. you're on with donald barlett and james steele on booktv. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. the african-american community is really conflicted as to what president obama has done to address our economic concerns, and i see your book "time on the cross." does this book give any basis as to why, um, african-americans seem to do the worst during times of economic distress? >> host: mary, i don't think they wrote a week called -- a book called "time on the cross." >> guest: no, this was on the list -- >> host: oh, i apologize, mary. was this your list? >> guest: yeah. >> host: okay. >> guest: i'll explain this. this was a book done by -- let's go back. literature is filled with

references to lawyers. let's, you know, let's kill all the lawyers, you know, from shakespeare forward. h.l. mencken, you name it. everybody wants to do in the lawyers, and i'm sympathetic to that. there's some merit there. but the one at the top of my list is not lawyers, it's economists who i think have done more harm to this country than any other single group. in this particular group, right after reading -- i forget even where -- but they applied econometric models to slavery and reached the not-too-surprising conclusion that slavery was profitable. i'm not sure where you go with that, but it tells you where people are thinking in, like, academic circles. that it's, it all of a sudden is no longer mysterious. that if you have a plantation full of slaves, you can really

run it in an economical way and make money. a lot of people you can make the same argument for for paying low wages. make a lot of money that way too. that doesn't mean it's right. and what gets lost with economists is what is right and what is wrong. they don't deal in that. they just deal with the money. >> host: jay sanders tweets in: have your views changed since you wrote "who left the door open"? please elaborate and speak to what's going on now. is that an article -- >> guest: no, it was a account account -- it was a "time" magazine piece. and we spent a lot of time on the border. so a lot of things that were really disturbing went uncovered. and still go uncould'ved. uncovered. spent some time on ranches that

had been in the family, in family hands for more than a hundred years. spent time with people who far from being anti-immigrant or anti-illegal even, they provided food and water to those crossing the border illegally and moving into the states. they at no time want to make a -- they didn't want to make a judgment on that. and they felt that these people were working hard, and that was fine. and then all of a sudden you come to this thing where -- and then in addition to that, spent time with people whose families wound up spending a lot of money getting them legal immigration. and this comes back to what runs through everything we do: our

people being treated equally. and they're not. now we're going to confer automatic citizenship on people who are here illegally, period. now, you can make all kinds of arguments on why there should be a legal path to and all that, but what does that say about the person who came here at great personal expense and did it legally? what does that say about the right and the wrong? and that's where that piece came from. it's why, you know, it would be at odds with a lot of what's happening today. have i personally changed? no. i think it's wrong, it's wrong to reward illegal behavior. and i don't care how well intended. but it doesn't mean you can't do it. but there is a downside to it.

>> host: jonathan, richmond, california. please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: hello. thank you very much for taking my call. i want to thank you two gentlemen for the wonderful works that you do on behalf of the masses of citizens out here in the country. um, it's very hard to grasp what is happening with the policy making, and you make it very understandable what we're feeling down here on the ground. the reality is, um, economic suffocation, slow and steady -- my mother and i are here on unemployment and social security, just scraping by, scuffling by, trying to, you know, understand what's going on. and we've discovered you guys recently, and thank you so much just for your basic patriotism. and it's just patriotic to be for the common good.

can you kind of respond why there has been so little discussion of the treachery? i just thought of a term earlier, welfare emperors. we've got welfare emperors who have taken over this country. why do we not hear a little bit more from journalists about right and wrong? how has right -- >> host: all right, jonathan, let's get a response from james steele. >> guest: well, i think most of what we have probably get most of our attention on is sort of right and wrong in terms of national policy and things of those big issues. there's been a lot of wrong in our book in terms of the way that policy has been implemented and how detrimental it has been to the average person. and don and i talk a lot about our business. i mean, here are two guys who have been in journalism their entire life, newspapers, magazines, writing books, and we're very concerned at how little coverage that you see sometimes on a daily and a

weekly basis that might shed some light on some of the things you're talking about. there's been hope that the internet explosion of outlets out there which give people an opportunity to write about a lot of these things would fill some of this gap, but we haven't seen that happening on any kind of systematic basis at this point. but i think what we try to do -- and you summarized it really remarkably well and really appreciate that -- is that we really try to explain what the impact of these policy decisions are on average people. and what happens to average people if certain fundamental things respect done. it's not just a -- aren't done. sometimes it is our neglect and our failure to move forward to do some things that are extremely important. so all i can tell you is that as we talked about earlier, we're never going to run out of work. it seems like the folks who make

these policies have an inexhaustible bag of tricks and deceptions that are at the root of these problems. >> host: forever more: nuclear waste in america, 1985. we haven't talked about that yet. here's a quote: because the government can rightly say that some low-level waste is harmless, it has never bothered to keep an accurate count. >> host: has anything changed in the last 25, 26 years? >> guest: this is another one of those that is one of our favorites again, because that book ends with not low-level, but high-level waste. in other words, the used fuel rods at nuclear power plants. and the big issue back then was

we've got to move these somewhere for safe storage, and there were plans to put them in a repository, later they settle on yucca mountain, nevada. now that's been revoked, and so who knows? but that book edited with the assertion that in all likelihood fuel rods won't remain where they are now, at storage pools at every power plant in the country. that's exactly where they are. this industry had a death wish. and, you know, some people who read that book, you know, i don't know, kind of decided that we were anti-nuclear. that was not the case at all. but just deal with the problems that are within the industry and that are solvable. deal with them instead of pretending. nothing has changed. nothing has changed. >> guest: some people ask us about do you feel bad about whatever you've brought to light, nothing is acted on, and we always have a simple answer

for that. of these things take time the more complicated they are, but the nuclear waste issue is a very interesting one in that context pause when we wrote that -- because when we wrote that book and talked about the low-level waste -- and as far as we know there isn't any more tabulation on that, but i could be wrong. i haven't looked at that in the last few years. but what we said in the book was the direction of federal policy, which was to put these low-level waste sites in all over the country, we said this was really very dangerous. because the bulk of the country, the soil is not conducive to those kinds of installations. because everywhere they'd put it, it was leeching off, creating environmental hazards, liabilities that states and federal government had to clean up. but the way policy was moving was to create a lot of these. well, it's interesting. in subsequent years this has all been rolled back. and to my knowledge, none of those sites have been placed in

areas of high rainfall and water table problems. most of them have stayed either where they were or in dry, air rid areas -- arid areas which is where they should be where you don't run the risk of rainfall. so we actually think a lot of people did kind of read that books, and a lot of things did absorb over a long period of time. there were orr voices saying the same thing, so any big issue there's multiple voices i don't care where it is. but we actually do think that, entirely possible that book did contribute to that debate. we still get mail about this book. i mean, this book is 25-plus years old, and people still write us from time to time through the web site. >> host: why do you think yucca mountain was revoked? >> guest: well, two things happened there. this is in nevada and, of course, we all know senator harry reid is certainly a very powerful figure in the united states congress. but there actually were, if i'm not mistaken, some scientific studies that raised questions about, to that.

we took the position in "forever more" you shouldn't put any of this stuff in the ground, any of the high-level stuff. yeah, it's supposedly safe, but things can happen. tectonic movements over time. best to keep it aboveground one way or another or somewhere where you can see what's going on, where you can control it. and that went totally against the prevailing wisdom at the time. and we just felt based on the simple examples that were out there, every time -- we want to bury this stuff so we don't have to think about it. buzz that's not the thing to do because it raises all kinds of concerns down the line in years and' ons that we don't even know what's going to happen. so keep it in sight. it's, to our way of thinking, a better way to deal with it. >> host: ron e-mails in: during the recent recession and housing crash, the only area where housing prices went up rather than down was in the counties surrounding washington, d.c. where so-called public servants were prospering throughout the

recession that was putting millions out of their homes. isn't government the only growth industry in the usa? isn't government the largest member of the dreaded 1%? and what do you think of the tea party? >> guest: well, most of the growth in these counties are not government servants. these are the consultants, the lobbyists, the companies that somehow or another have figured out it's very essential to be that close to government. there's a connection that way, and they may have some government contracts. so it's not pure government employees, per se, but it's obviously an offshoot of that particular thing. and this is an age-old pattern in washington, as anybody in and around it knows. of don and i have done work here for decades. it's always been fairly resistant to recessions because of that built-in advantage. the tea party, i think we both

feel really has had some really valid issues. they're very upset at both parties. i've talked to a few members of the tea party from time to time, and they sound like a lot of the points we major in our book -- we make in our book. the problem, i think, in some cases has been what's happened at the state level with some of the gerrymandering and the redistricting that some of those folks have been involved in that's created districts that to our way of thinking do not always reflect the democracy as a whole. >> guest: i think, you know, their proposed solutions just don't track. [laughter] >> host: victor e-mails in: robert mogul wrote "time on the cross." slaves were treated with dignity and care because their economic

value to the openers was important, not that slavery was profitable. >> guest: well, that's true. and, but the two co-authors -- the two are interwoven. the idea is if you take care of your slaves, you will do well. i'm not sure you want to make a case for a society based on that. >> host: sandy's e-mail: who would you like to see as our next president? >> guest: we've, i think, studiously avoided endorsing presidents, congressmen, representatives. we've said publicly during this book that of the plans put forth by romney and obama, certainly on the taxes alone, the obama plan is a more, we think, equitable plan for the country as a whole. no doubt about that. and, you know, and we've said that. but what's amazing as we've talked about today is how mild that is compared to the way we

used to deal with those issues. but that was certainly better in a system -- than a system that lets somebody of romney's wealth pay 14 president of his -- 14% of his income in federal taxes. that's just outrageous. >> host: now, on the other side, toward the end of this 2012 campaign, the republican side started saying, well, everybody should participate pointing out that 40, 50% of americans do not pay any income tax. >> guest: right. >> host: what's your view on that? >> guest: well, the problem is if the income keeps going down, i mean, you reach a point where ordinarily i would agree with that, i would say absolutely. everyone should be participating in the society. as the income keeps going down for those people, you know, at the bottom, i don't know how you can get more money out of them. >> guest: and also, that thing ignored the fact that those people are not paying federal income tax are still paying social security and medicare taxes. it's not as though they're not

paying something to the federal government. in fact, a number of studies that show the percentage of people that are paying nothing at all is like 8 or 9%. it's not the 40 some percent. it gets back to the fact people are making less and less money. it's like food stamps. food stamps, most of the people on food stamps now are actually working. >> guest: this is a huge change. that's why there are all this, you know, with the republicans making a punching bag out of the people on food stamps. are there people getting food stamps that shouldn't be on it, probably, undoubtedly. but if you went back 20 years, everybody getting food stamps didn't have a job. they weren't employed. now the majority of people on food stamps are employed, but they are paid so little they need supplemental help. that says more about our society than anything, that wages are at a level in which you may need food stamps. >> host: reggie green,

greensboro, north carolina. is there anything out there that you see to suggest some movement back to placing the patient and health care first ahead of maximizing profits and increasing business? >> guest: that's an easy one. no. [laughter] nor will there be under the existing system. >> host: georgia in pembroke, north carolina. georgia, please go ahead. >> caller: yes. first, i have a comment on the nafta. nafta agreement has almost completely destroyed the state of north carolina. you know, we wound up, they closed most of the factories, and this is why our employment rate is so high here. that's my comment on nafta. that was the worst thing that could have ever possibly happened. i've always disagreed with that. number two, i think that this country should have term limits. the president of this country, we have term limits for our president. and i believe as long as the

representatives that sit in our congress are allowed to sit there forever and ever and ever until they're so old that they fall asleep in the meetings and continue know what's going on anyway, if necessary, you know, we know that they're not going to vote term limits in for themselves. i believe the people should get off their lazy rear ends and get a constitutional amendment, force this issue with term limits. and this is why they want to stay in. they can go in as poor as church mice and then come out millionaires. you know, they're in there for the money that they make, and everybody knows they're going to come out rich. and i do believe that this is going to be a necessary thing for term limits. that's the only way we're going to get rid of the greed. and as far as that, we also need an amendment to get rid of the lobbyists. i don't believe we had this problem in congress until the lobbyists seemed to take over. i'm 74 years old.

i still work. i'm still employed. i still pay taxes. and you know what? i don't mind paying taxes. i've paid taxes almost 60 years now. and i don't mind working. i enjoy my job. but what i do object to is when my percentage of taxes is higher than what mitt romney pays. boy, that really made me a little hot under the collar. >> host: all right, georgia, a lot on the table there. mr. barlett, you want to start? >> guest: i'm not sure. i almost don't disagree with anything she said. but on the term limit issue, i will disagree with her for this reason: if we had term limits, we would have lost a lot of really great legislators. but the other problem is today if you had term limits, it would shift the balance of power to the staffs, and nothing would change except the staffs would become rich.

>> guest: i think, you know, your point on term limits is -- i'm not as opposed to this as i once was, because you do keep looking at this, and you keep seeing how, what we're getting from these current ones. it's just not leading to the kinds of results we need. but as don just said, i also know some congressmen, senators who have been around a while or were around a while who were very admirable and who have done great work. so it probably comes back to the issue we just need to make sure who we elect. and if they're not worth it two years later, turn them out. i know that's harder because of the money issues anymore. and the way money influences those elections. but i still think when push

comes to shove, it's still the best way to deal with it. but don't misunderstand me, i really understand the pain on this and the frustration. because we've been writing about these issues for many, many years. and rather than things being better now, they seem to be worse. so we hear you. >> host: final e-mail. robert young: a question, based upon my observation is it reasonable to conclude that the '50s and the '60s were more equitable due mostly or solely to the leftovers from the we're all in this together from worldd war ii? >> guest: i think absolutely. >> host: and is that, when you referred to the dream and what went wrong, are you looking at the '50s -- >> guest: the '50s, '60s and '70s, yeah. >> host: as a golden era? >> guest: absolutely. >> guest: and the that

statistics bear this out. personal income for the richest americans in the '50s, '60s and '70s went up about the same rate. nobody disputes the fact that people can be wealthy and have money, that's okay. but everybody sort of prospered at the same rate. >> guest: at the same rate. >> guest: but from the '80s on, it's gone the other way. there's a shift in that sense, and that's what's different. some people would have you say, t inevitable as part of the global economy. we say, no, there are specific policies that have encouraged this and helped bring this about. >> host: and you have been watching booktv on c-span2. this is our monthly program featuring an author or authors and their body of work. james steele and donald barlett have been our guests. multiple pulitzer prize national magazine award winners, r50 awards -- 50 awards altogether, so for their work. they have written eight books. their web site is barlettandsteele.com is how they are known. their most rec